June 13, 2025 • 38 mins
Outlouders, the second episode of Parenting Out Loud has just dropped so we're adding it here as a little Saturday treat. You. Are. Welcome.
Join Jessie Stephens and Amelia Lester as they discuss:
- Is the family dinner really just a guilt trip with cutlery?
- If Kourtney Kardashian is on to something when she says school's outdated.
- The model who makes money from encouraging women and girls to live a 'skinny' lifestyle. Different generation, different platform, same disturbing message.
And in their reccos this week:
-
Amelia's got a brilliantly grim podcast that both you and your kid will love.
-
Jessie shares her sneaky hack to score all the toys—no meltdown required.
Come join the conversation. New eps drop Saturdays. No shoulder spit-ups required.
Support independent women's media
WHAT TO LISTEN TO NEXT:
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 1: Grandparents — It's Time For Your Performance Review
- Undoing Toxic 90’s Diet Culture For The Next Generation
- A Declutter Expert's Top Hacks And Why Every Family Needs A 'Drop Zone'
- How To Build A Universe: Trains, Planes And Adventure Games!
- But Are You Happy: The Right Way To Say No To People You Love
WHAT TO READ:
- 'I'm an organisational expert, and the "drop zone" hack is all you need to beat clutter.'
- 'My house was full of clutter, until I learnt about the "reach" theory.'
- STEPH CLAIRE SMITH: 'Your whole family will love these 20-minute dinner recipes.'
- LYNDI COHEN: 'The simple recipe I recommend everyone makes for a family dinner.'
- "It sucks if you have carpet." 6 things no one told me about feeding a baby.
THE END BITS:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Parenting Out Loud. I'm Jesse Stevens and I am joined
by Amelia Lester, and we are here to talk about
some of the stories that dominated the week, because if
(00:36):
parents are thinking about it, we're talking about it. Amelia, Welcome,
Thanks Jesse. I wanted to thank you because a lot
of people may know you as a fashionistuf I believe
this tree is the correct term, and you recommended to
me your Lulu Lemon fled pants. We both agreed that
they were an elevated active way.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Look, an elevated pant, the term that fashion needs to be.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
And I bought them. I went and found them like secondhand, A.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You're wearing your elevated pants.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I feel solf.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
They're so good because no one knows their leggings except you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, they're my new uniform.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Like I feel so jens Z like how I'm like
Billie Eilish, that's same. I feel she has them.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm so bad in them.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I just we just mixed metaphors there. But let's go with.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It infinitely cooler, So you are my cool guru.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Glad people say that to me a lot, actually, And.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
On the show today, one of the most pervasive pieces
of parenting advice is making everyone feel bad about themselves.
We've solved the mystery of what happened to the family
dinner table. Plus Courtney Kardashian thinks school is dated, why
more kids are being homeschooled than ever before? And Skinny
Talk Amelia is here to explain the social media phenomenon
(01:57):
promoting a skinny lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But first, in case you missed it, Kate Hudson has
revealed Mindy Kayling was back to work an hour after
giving birth, which made me feel bad. Hudson, who will
be forever almost famous to me and I'm assuming to
you too, Jesse, but is in fact, somehow now forty
six years old and has three children. She is on
a press tour with Mindy Kayling and they have a
(02:20):
new show on Netflix called Running Point. I had to
look up what this was about. It's apparently about a
reformed party girl put in charge of her family's pro
basketball team.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Apparently it's a lot of fun. It's like a female
ted LASSI that's what I've med.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, well, it's not an immediately interesting plot to me,
I had to admit, but I do love everything Mindy
Kayling does, and she co created the show. Anyway, Hudson said,
we had a script she and Mindy at our first
table read she's on zoom. Then she has a baby
and is sending notes like an hour after she has
the baby. I was like, isn't Mindy literally in labor?
(02:53):
She is a powerhouse and delivers what she's going to deliver.
Hudson continued, I want to unpack this with you because
so Mindy Kayling is forty five, she has three children.
I don't have an issue with Mindy Kayling doing anything
an hour after giving birth. Godspeed to Mindy Kaling. She's
an amazing creative woman. But I think what I'm annoyed
(03:14):
about here is Kate Hudson lionizing the behavior. I think
that's what annoys me because doesn't it just put pressure
on other women who have maybe less power, fewer financial
resources to immediately get back to work after having a
baby when they hear stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah right, I agree with you. I'm in two minds
about it because, like you, I think a woman can do.
I was gonna say whatever she wants post birth probably
limits on that. I think that she can pick up
her phone if she wants, right, I've heard. I remember
Roxy just saying co speaking years ago, she's had two babies,
and she joked that she took one hour maternity leave,
(03:49):
and she said she checked her emails laying in the
hospital bed, and when she was sort of pressed on it,
she said, the baby was sleeping. I was going to
turn on the TV. I was going to have a sleeper.
I was going to open my emails. And I chose that.
And she's a woman running her own business like you
do you. I actually find it really infantalizing when people
tell women what they can and can't do. Yep. But
I agree that the pressure it then puts on other
(04:12):
mothers in particular, because let's not pretend like we wouldn't
have any issue really with a dad checking his emails
an hour a birth, that doesn't have the same.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
He's probably checking his emails during during.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Birth, yep, just checking his slack, making sure there's nothing
urgent coming through. But women, I think we do put
this pressure on each other. I remember seeing this imagery
of a woman pumping in the boardroom and that being
like it was some image that was going around and
it's like working mother.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I feel like when I was growing up, that was
just sort of an image you saw every day. It
was like in the nineties there was this say, you
have women in boardrooms pumping, yeah, with babies.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And I saw that and I felt furious because it
was like, but I don't want to be pumping in
a boardroom. I want to be at home with my baby.
And does that make me less ambitious or less hard working?
I think when it's used as a proxy for unshakable
work ethic, it's super, super dangerous because if there's ever
an excuse to not be on your emails, yeah, surely
(05:11):
it's when you've had a baby.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
You've dislodged a memory deep within me of a cover
of a magazine with Rachel McAdams pumping.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh I remember that.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Now. There's also been covers. For instance, Australian l I
think was a World Leader in a cover with a
woman breastfeeding. So I guess I shouldn't have an issue
with the Rachel McAdams pumping cover. It's certainly not anything prudish,
but again, it's the sense of why are you multitasking?
Because now I have to multitask. Isn't it enough to
just do one thing at a time.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And the thing with pumping is that it's always it's
always spilling and you're always running, like that's the imagery
of the pumping that it's like, now you're not physically bound,
you too can do a marriage.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Sorry, do you not run when you pump? That's weird, Jessie.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
It's like, if you do want to sit down, it's lazy.
And I looked at this story, and I even looked
at Roxy a little bit more closely, and I thought,
I don't know if anyone here is actually telling us
that this is aspirational. But there is this sensitivity when
it comes to anything motherhood that we internalize it, that
(06:20):
we immediately go, You've just made me feel bad.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And specifically the competition element, like this is probably my
problem more than it is Kate Hudson's. Yeah, yeah, I
should understand that what Mindy Kayling does after birth has
nothing to do with me, and yet we're always implicitly comparing.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
One of the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is
making people feel bad about themselves, and it's got to
do with the dinner table. Eating dinner as a family
is seen as a cornerstone of good parenting. According to
an article published in Slate last month, Research has linked
the practice too better nutrition, improved academic performance, decreased depression, anxiety,
(06:57):
and kids improve communication. I could go on, but the
author of this article, her name is Dawn t, says
that in reality, most families just can't make it work.
In Australia, less than half of families currently eat together. Amelia,
why do you think this is? On the surface, it
looks like a relatively simple thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I think, Jessie, that this is a real estate story.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
In what way?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Let me unpack this? Do people even have dining room
tables anymore? And aren't they doubling mostly as laundry rooms?
Or is that just me?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I had my first dining table when I moved into
a home two months before we had Luna, and my
twin sister did not have a dining table for the
first year of her baby's life.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So did you grow up sitting around the dining room table? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, And I was reading about Actually, they surveyed a
bunch of millennials about whether you grew up in a
house or an apartment, and the overwhelming majority was a house,
not necessarily a big house, not necessarily in a city.
But there was a house, which meant you had a backyard,
it meant you didn't have super close neighbors who were
maybe sensitive to yelling and crying. And now the percentage
(08:10):
because of high density living in cities, I believe it's
gone through the roof.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. An SPS story basically summed it up with the
headline raised in a house, but parenting in an apartment.
That is the experience. It's certainly my experience. And just
to throw some numbers at you because I thought they
were really interesting, the number of families with children and
apartments has increased by fifty six percent from twenty eleven,
which is huge. Yeah, and then one in five apartments
(08:36):
now are occupied by a family with children. Certainly, anecdotally,
almost everyone I know lives in an apartment and yet
grew up in a house.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
But apartments fundamentally are not built for families.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
They're not. Well, this is what I need to get
on my high horse about. I think even though Australians
are now living more and more in apartments and raising
children and apartments. I don't think that culturally we've caught
up with this, and I want to mention one particular
aspect that you touched on before. I think noise is
a real issue. So i live in an apartment with
two kids, and I've noticed that I'm not the most
(09:11):
popular resident of the apartment building. I think that's safe
to say. I don't think any of them listen to this,
and I don't think that I need to worry about
them being offended. I just don't think they like us
living in the apartment very much. Can talk about the
various microaggressions, but this is not time for my real
estate gripes. It's not just in my head, because it
turns out a twenty eighteen study found that Australians correlate
(09:33):
being a good neighbor with being a quiet neighbor, which,
fair enough, I get it, Yeah, quiet neighbors are probably
better on balance than loud neighbors. But also the survey
found that people think that children shouldn't be the norm
in apartments. They think that they shouldn't be noise from
children in apartments. And so how this changes my parenting
is that I'm constantly telling my children to speak less loudly.
(09:53):
The net result is that they actually play less. They
certainly horse play less because that's very loud. And often
if I'm really stressed out about the volume, I'll just
turn on the TV because then I know they won't
be screaming and running through the apartment playing tip And
I think that we're seeing the same thing with the
dinner table idea. We're constantly top that you'll only raise
good conversation as if you sit down at the dinner table.
(10:13):
And certainly I was raised sitting at the dinner table
watching the news every night. I cannot imagine subjecting my
children to the news in this day and age. But
the idea of that's what makes you a good parent
is grounded in an assumption that people are living in houses,
not flats.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Exactly right, And I suppose as well, the difference from
parenting and an apartment is a necessity every single day
to get out of the house. There is no like
they talk about how important it is to know, not supervise,
and to let kids sort of play and explore. When
you've got an apartment that's for square meters, there'n't a
lot of places to explore, and I was reading about
(10:51):
how in Singapore, for example, they open up public schools
after school hours and stuff so that parents, because let's
not pretend like Australia is the only place with high
density living right like France, China, Singapore is one of them,
and so they've found ways to make communal green space
where people can go and play. And Australia or the cities,
(11:13):
it really depends on your subit.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
This was something that really surprised me when I moved
back to Australia last year after many years in the US.
Public schools in the US routinely are open after school,
before school, and on the weekends they're just not closed
so you can take your kid in and play on
the playground equipment. Here, I was shocked by this notion
that when school ends, the gates close and you can't
(11:36):
use the playground, and it feels like a waste of
space because you've got all these areas for kids to play,
and it also again feels like it's a relic from
a time when kids went home from school and maybe
frolicked around the yard like chickens. We don't have a
yard now.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Most people din't it makes a really big difference. But
back to the dinner table example, I think even people
who live in homes or who do have dining tables,
and I think the apartment thing is that up and
it's too small for a dining table, or they've got
like built in benches, so the bench is kind of
the hub. But I think the way our homes have changed,
it's at the centerpiece of the house is now the
(12:11):
living room with the television. So true, and so screens
have stolen the time that we would ordinarily sit around
and have a chat. Maybe, and that's not like we
don't value that as much, or because we are living
in small or smaller places, the dining table has become
a place with just a lot of crap on it.
(12:32):
So it could be where you work during the day,
if you're working remotely. It could be homework. It could
be laundry because I don't have a laundry, like we
have to put it somewhere. The other thing I thought, Amelia,
and I wanted to know whether you feel the same
when I now picture a family sitting around at dinner table,
do you see that as class coded because I see
(12:52):
it as a sign of money. Yes, Like because you've
got both parents at home at six pm, which is
I would say, pretty rare. You've got someone who's made
the meal, but four six pm, or maybe you've got
help who's made the meal. But when I see that image, go, oh,
that's become really loaded with class for me.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
You're so right, because there's a fundamental physics problem in
getting a hot meal on a table at the time
that children want to eat it when we're all working
around the clock. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I don't know. It's like an impossible equation.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And so this idea of having the space for the
dining room table, having the parents who have divided the
labor of such that someone's made the meal or they,
as you say, assigned that to someone else, and then
having you all sit around the table, Yeah, it does
feel like a luxury in this day and age. But
I wonder do you think we should be worried about
(13:48):
this or do you think that the studies themselves are
kind of caught in the past.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Look, I think ideally it would be really good for us.
I think it would because in terms of nutrition and mindfulness,
when you're eating, it is better to not be looking
at a screen. I say, this is someone who often
eats in front of a screen. And the second thing
is I was reading about how evolutionarily we tend to
trust people we eat with. It's like a programmed thing.
(14:15):
That's like there's a sense of connection we feel equal to.
It is hardwired into us that something social happens when
we eat, Like, for example, if you're doing a business negotiation,
you have snacks on the table, it's more likely to
go well. So that's hardwired into us. And I think
that that connection even growing up. I think they're some
of my favorite memories. So I keep going, I'll do
(14:36):
it eventually, I'll do it eventually. It's aspirational, it's a
work in progress. Courtney kutashi In, the forty six year
old reality star and mum of four biological children and
two step kids, says going to school is dated and
let me explain.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
She was recently on her sister Chloe's podcast and said
she has a rebel streak that includes questioning the purpose
of sending her kids to school. Apparently her kids started
sending her videos of successful people. She didn't quantify that.
I don't know what her definition is. I'm gonna say
that's coded for rich saying that their kids will never
go to school, And when she really grappled with what
(15:14):
the goal was, she agreed that it was unnecessary and
decided to homeschool, and Chloe enthusiastically agreed. Now, there are
a myriad of reasons why you at homeschool your children.
But Amelia, do you think it's possible that Courtney just
got played by her kids who didn't want to go
to school next week?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I am intrigued by this notion of the videos of
successful people saying the kids will never go to school. Look,
I think this is part of a trend that has
come out of the US post COVID, and I'm actually
surprised that this trend has taken so long to make waves. Basically,
I think that as society becomes less equal, as the
(15:53):
very rich become not just very rich, but sort of
gluttonously extravagantly rich, there's no wonder they've decided school is
not for them. School is a fundamental leveling field. It's
a place where all children are meant to go to
learn the same things. And it's actually surprising that we've
managed a whole onto this kind of egalitarian institution for
as long as we have in such a stratified society.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
So in Courtney's defense, does it kind of not matter
if her kids go to school? Like for the rest
of us, it does matter because it is a great equalizer.
But if you are the child of Kourtney Kardashian, maybe
you don't need that. Maybe you don't need that background.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Well, now that we have this phrase generational wealth in
the language, I guess it doesn't really matter from a
financial perspective. But I think that once the rich start
pulling their kids from school, the institution starts to crumble.
I'm very worried about this. We've seen it also in
the US, with the way that Silicon Valley has rejected
the idea of higher education and of university. They've decided
(16:51):
that you don't need to go to university at all,
no matter what. It's a waste of time, it's indoctrinating
you and certain sort of center left ideological beliefs that
they don't approve of. Now they've come for school. It's
all part of the same movement.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
There's obviously been this widespread rejection of institutions, some of
it which is really understandable. For example, the Catholic Church
that have been criticized, and understandably people are moving away.
But there's also this rejection of education, of the scientific method,
of academia, of studies, of any sort of rigor to
(17:29):
the ideas that we put forward. And I wonder if
this is the beginning of the end in terms of
any sort of enlightenment ideals like it is worth reading
what other people say so that you can evolve how
you'd think.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, it's fundamentally anti intellectual. And I think that what
is of a piece with it is the Robert F.
Kennedy Make America Healthy Again movement, This idea that the
scientists might say that vaccines are worthwhile and that fluoride
makes your teams stronger, but what do they know. I'm
sure that Courtney Kardashian is sympathetic to that kind of
(18:02):
quasi scientific thinking as well. It's really a rejection not
just of education, but of expertise.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yes, and the reject of that expertise doesn't hurt the
Kurtney Kardashians. It hurts the people who don't get the
vaccination and have comobidities and are black or Hispanic and
have you know, a number of things that would make
them particularly vulnerable to an illness, right, and that's what
I think. Hearing her talk about that, I agree, made
(18:30):
me worried. And I agree as well that this has
a lot to do with the pandemic because in Australia,
if you look at homeschooling rates, absenteeism, which we should
say are not the same thing, but absenteeism school refusal,
they've gone through the roof and experts have said they
think that COVID made parents see schooling as something that
(18:54):
could be done from home. So in the same way
that working from home became something all employees went, well,
it's possible, you just sent us home. If they saw
that as something that worked for them or was even
a possibility, then suddenly you've got literally there are more
Australians being homeschooled than before. And they say that's a
result of things like bullying, of obviously the increase in
(19:15):
tech that it can be done, and also of safety
like them not feeling safe at school, which I think
is everyone's prerogative. And also homeschooling is a lot higher
among people with an autism diagnosis or an ADHD diagnosis.
Maybe there's also a discussion to be had about the
failings of some schools to cater to those diverse needs.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
And specifically the underfunding of public education around the country
as well. I've heard similar things from friends in the US.
I have a friend in a US state that is
very religious and she has to homeschool her child because
they do not have a lot of schools to choose
from around and her child has many additional needs that
(19:56):
the local schools were just not really able to meet,
so they made the decision to hire a private tutor
and homeschool their child. When she went to the local
town office to put in the application to homes school,
she was shocked by how easy it was to say
that you're going to homeschool your child and how little
supervision was applied to this process. So she basically filled
(20:19):
in a one page form that asked her very little
about what she was going to teach, didn't provide her
with any resources visa VIE, curriculum or anything else. She
essentially just had to say I want to homeschool my child.
I don't need to tell you the reasons, and then
got approved for it. And it was really viscerally upsetting
to her because while she's going to be making sure
(20:39):
that her child is meeting the state curriculum requirements and
has been in a position where she can hire a
tutor who she feels really confident in that can educate
her child properly. There are many people in this state
who clearly have parents who are not necessarily trying to
check all those boxes and are doing it because they
don't want them to be exposed to a mainstream school curriculum.
(21:01):
And that's really concerning to me. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And that speaks to the Courtney Kardashian example too, because
I don't think any of us would imagine that Courtney
is going to sit at home and teach maths like
that's access to a private tutor, which is again like
something that's on offer to some families and not to others.
Another thing that I've heard everyone in my family, teachers
and both my parents spoke about an enormous rise in
(21:29):
this school refusal phenomenon after COVID. It's been almost rebranded
by some people in the space as school can't because
they say refusal suggests they're making a decision, and these
are kids who cannot go to school, and so all
these psychologists are trying to work out what to do,
because in Australia you have to go to school, like
there are repercussions and the school has to get involved,
(21:51):
and it can be really complicated. I would look at
these stories and kind of go, all right, there were
days I didn't want to go to school either, like
I didn't have a lot of empathy for it. And
Dad told me this story about a kid, the poor
mother just putting the kid in the car, and Dad's
standing there and the mother just trying to pull him
by his ankles and being like, you have to go
to school, this is so important, and the kid just couldn't, like,
(22:14):
couldn't go into the classroom.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
This is a post COVID study.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
This is a post COVID story. And the numbers nearly
half of all students missed ten percent of school in
twenty twenty two, so that's actually quite a lot. The
sick days thing is becoming more and more prominent, which
I guess is probably to do with screens. But again
the idea that it's optional. When something becomes optional as well,
(22:40):
then I suppose you go I'm not going to go today.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I was surprised when I started my kids at their
school that they still give out prizes for best attendancy.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, that's controversial, contras, I can see why, because kids
can't help it when they get sick.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Do we learn nothing from COVID? I'm just really surprised.
Why do you think schools I mean, I guess I'm
going to answer something own question here. I think schools
are persisting with that idea of perfect intendance and rewarding
kids who make it into school the most because they're
seeing this trend of school refusal or school can't and
they want to hammer home what an example of a
(23:19):
kid showing up every day.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Looks like and the importance of sitting in the classroom,
because my parents would say that, you know, you might
look at your nine, or you might look at your
five and go, come on, what's a day? But if
you repeatedly miss that, there are certain blocks in learning
that are very difficult to catch up on. So there
is something that you will learn in year five. I'm
not saying on one day. I'm just saying, like, if
you you know, and people who have had a prolonged
(23:42):
illness will know this, you miss that and it become
very hard to catch up in year six or year seven.
So I suppose it is like, if you're on the fence,
go but presentee, is there more forcing that also isn't
the ideal?
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yes, So I guess we're kind of talking about a
few different things here. One is the rise of homeschooling,
which I think we can attribute to the general decline
of trust in authority and expertise post COVID, and it's
right now. It's being led by very wealthy people, I
would say, who want to control what their children learn
and are maybe not very interested.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And then on the other hand, people with kids with
different needs. I think that's the other group. Yeah, we've
probably got to acknowledge and in fact, for them, the
outcomes are really good.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Liv Schmidt is a twenty three year old model in
New York City who makes her money encouraging women and
girls to follow the skinny lifestyle. This was a story
in The Cut last week that is causing people to
lose their minds. Basically I knew nothing about this, but
Live Schmidt. She was on TikTok until last year, then
she was banned after a Wall Street Journal article. Now
(24:50):
she's on Instagram. She's just been banned from Instagram as
a result of this article. Basically she mocks women who
she says are large and fat. She posts videos where
she says things like girls be three hundred pounds, saying
I'm a snack. No Megatron, you're the fkn vending machine.
So just really nice things like that. She has a
(25:12):
subscription only group called Skinny Society, which, for twenty dollars
a month, members gain access to exclusive content, including recipes,
workout videos, and diaries of everything Schmid eats in one day.
She gained some notoriety recently because she said that instead
of having dessert, you could swallow your boyfriend's semen, and
(25:35):
she said that semen's only something like five calories of
tea spoon, so that's good to know. There's also a
group dm thread that you get access to where people
basically egg themselves on to eat less. And it's just
really distressing to read about airmail. The publication Airmail recently
estimated that she makes one hundred and thirty thousand US
(25:55):
dollars a month from the six and a half thousand
members in the Skinny Society. So look, I think why
this article made such a splash is that people definitely
did not realize how thriving this somewhat underground community is
because as shown by the fact that TikTok and Meta
both had to ban her after news articles came out,
(26:15):
so clearly they're not moderating their platforms very well. If
you search skinny or skinny talk on TikTok and Instagram,
you'll apparently see thousands of videos along these lines of
very thin women showing off their locale diets. What's interesting
about liv Schmidt to me, having lived through the nineties
and Kate Moss and heroin Chic, is that she's very
(26:36):
careful not to advocate for particular foods, particular diets. She
frames it all in this sort of faux feminist empowering language.
She says things like eat like you're the main character,
because you are. She says, eat like your highest self
is watching. So it's a very interesting kind of twist
on that feminist rhetoric to basically further eating disorders. And
(27:00):
the Cut article found evidence of girls in high school
posting on skinny society, including about how thin they were
for their graduations. Shocked by this, but maybe that's because
I'm not super immersed in social media, Jesse. How did
this article make you feel. Were you shocked by it?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
I was because I'm not being served this. But then
the way the algorithms work, the people who will be
most sensitive to it will And maybe it's easy for
us to assume that the culture has shifted. But I
was at something a few weeks ago where it was
like a kid's fun day thing, right, and there was
like an obstacle course, and there was a jumping castle
(27:39):
and there was face painting, and in the obstacle course
there was a tunnel thing, you know, kids like run
through these little tunnels. And there was a girl, she
might have been six or seven, and she was standing
there and her friend said, why aren't you going through
the tunnel like because she hadn't been doing it, and
she said, I can't fit through the tunnel. I'm too fat.
(28:01):
And the look on this girl's face, I went, Oh,
I thought that didn't happen anything. Yes, I thought that
that's not how we spoke exactly. It wasn't that she
said I can't fit, because she could have gone I'm
too big. She was a little bit older than the
four year old's going through. It was the way the
word fat came out of her mouth that I went, oh,
that's got to her at seven? Yeah, like that is sickening.
(28:23):
There is so much information now on food and solids
and feeding and all of that and how to prevent
you know, restriction and all of that. And I've been
deep in this because I have a child who eating
has never been very straightforward, and the idea that you
put it there and as you decide when you're full,
and you don't comment on things like that. But I've
(28:45):
certainly noticed that even like oh, she's so little or whatever,
has already started. And I wonder how you then protect
them from because inevitably, and I went through this, you
then go through puberty where your body starts to change
and suddenly you know, maybe you're not that little, or
(29:05):
parts of you, whatever it is, it's a really hard
thing to sort of recalibrate. I wouldn't think that seven
year old is even on social media, so I imagine
that it's just coming into the well.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
It's like ground, as you point out with your own child,
people are already judging or commenting on her body, on
Luna's body, so it's happening early. And I completely agree
with what you said about thinking that we were over
this because you and I both lived through the body
positivity moment in the mid two thousands, and thinking back
(29:39):
to I guess it all started actually with the dove
ads and then it kind of snowballed from there, and
it coincided actually with the decline of magazines, which is
where I certainly inhaled a lot of this content in
the nineties, and I sort of thought we were just
beyond it, that along with them on nuanced understanding of
things like sexuality and race relations and the environment and
(30:00):
taking care of the environment, we were just getting more progressive,
more enlightened, and that our children wouldn't have to deal
with this. While it turns out I was wrong, And
what came through to me in this cut article is
that every generation ends up having this issue, and it's
just that the language around it changes and the media
in which it's consumed changes. So I mentioned that for
(30:21):
me in the nineties, it was very much magazines that
were conveying the diet tips. In the early two thousands,
it was probably live journal, Tumbler of those kinds of platforms.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Oh Tumblr, I forgot how and that was very much
the image that it had. This Really there was a
term that was used that was almost hashtagged, and it
attracted people who were struggling with eating disorders and glorified.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Bro Anna right, yes, yes, yeah, so that was the
thing then and now it's just moved on to a
different platform. What I want to ask you is, do
you think that there is any escaping it or is
this kind of like nihilistic idea that every generation of
young women inevitably has to cope with this.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I think it's true that we had this optimism. I
remember hearing mums talk about it in the office of like,
I'm going to get my daughter when she has a phone.
I'll just follow a bunch of diverse people on Instagram,
so she'll see all of those images and it'll be
the antithesis of a magazine or whatever, because she'll have
all of these different bodies and shapes coming up. You
can't do that on TikTok, like you just can't and.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Won't curate in that way. No control.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
All it takes is you know, I'm pretty sure if
that app knows that you're a young girl, it's going
to go. I know what to give you, and then
all you have to do is stay for a second,
and you're just going to get more and more so
in that way, I don't think so. But from what
I've heard, people I know that grew up with a
real complex around weight seemed to absorb some of that
(31:50):
from their family. And I just maybe the hope or
the thing that I go the difference we can make
is like how we talk about it inside the house, yes,
and the language, how you speak about other people, how
you speak about food, how you speak about bodies, how
you look at yourself in the mirror, All of those
things I think does impact it. I grew up with
a mum who never commented on her body once, not negatively,
(32:12):
not her face, not anything, and I think it was
just like to me in my house, it felt irrelevant,
whereas I know that that really impacted other people who
grew up with a different experience.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
It's also really hard to escape even when you are
trying to create a body neutral space within your family.
So for instance, I loved Roll Dyal books growing up.
Oh yeah, been reading them to my children, Matilda, Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory and the Twits. And the problem
with these books is that the word fat and the
(32:44):
idea that people who are ugly on the inside are
always ugly on the outside, and that those two things
are essentially synonymous. It pervades those books. A sort of
repulsion for women's bodies, particularly fat women's bodies, particularly women
who are maybe not your platonic ideal of beauty and
(33:05):
the merging of the inner and outer self. It's there
through those books. It's shot through them, and a lot
of older books do have that idea of inner beauty
being the same as out of beauty, and if fairy
tales have it too. In fact, the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella,
for instance, they're both ugly and mean. Cinderella is both
(33:26):
beautiful and kind, and to decouple those qualities if you're
going to read classic kids literature, it's really difficult to
convey that those two things are not synonymous.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That must be why every children's book now is animal.
It's like it's a gendlest animal because it's like we
could project on it. It doesn't matter the size. Sometimes
it's an elephant, sometimes it's a mouse. But it's like
you don't get all of that complexity of trying to
then identify them into a certain body, or you know that's.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
True because it is also quite recent that we've started
to talk about this in this way. For instance, Harry
Potter is full of the same thing, and that was
written in the two thousands. So it just goes to
show that we're hopefully on the cutting edge of trying
to teach a different thing to our children. But then again,
I'm sure our feminist mothers thought that they were doing
(34:18):
that too. Alright, it's time for recommendations, Jesse, what have
you got for us?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Amelia? Have you ever been to a toy library?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
No? I see these signs. Tell me what they're like.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
They sound wondering, they're so good, and it's so not
something I would ever have gone and found.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Well, it would be weird if you didn't have kids
and were just hanging out at toy library exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
But the toy library is part of my local library,
which is on my strings, so very very easy. But
I looked it up and there are hundreds across the country.
It's not just my neighborhood. But a toy library is
literally you go in and it's got every toy you
could possibly imagine. It has costumes, you know, there's a
stage at which they might like a little pram to
(34:58):
practice their walking and you know, you need that for
like two months and then you never need it again.
It has things like that, and then you do aigh.
I think it was like seventy bucks for a twelve
month subscription, and I could go every week if I
want it, and I can get like three or four.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Toys, and then I get three at a time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, so you get multiple toys return them. And I
was like, can I donate toys to this because I
remember reading something a while ago about how there's an
ideal amount of toys for They say it's between ten
and fifteen.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
So it probably wouldn't and probably wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And it inspires creativity because it's like, if they don't
have the doll, then they have to make the doll
out of playtoes, which is yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
That's where my parents went wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
But Toy Library is so so good because we all
know the clutter everything. Often your kid just wants it
for two weeks and then it disappears and they never
think about it again. So I love that. That's my
my hack. How about you, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
My recommendation is one very near and dear to my heart.
It's been a companion in my life. For years now.
It's a podcast. It's called Grim Grimmer Grimmist. Have you
heard of it?
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Is it Grim Brothers related?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Oh I love them.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yes, it is Grim fairy tales. I mean the Grim
Brothers are like true crime for the eighteenth century?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Right, Were they twins or just brothers? I think they
want maybe just brothers. But Clara and I find them
very inspiring because they watch Yeah, it's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
So the host is Adam Gidwitz. It's an American podcast,
and the fifth season of this podcast drops, And yes
I did say dropped. I'm very excited about it. Dropped
a couple of days ago. That's my household version of
rep TV. Just to give you a sense of how
exciting this is. So here's the premise. Adam Gibwitz goes
to the classroom of a very fancy school in Brooklyn,
(36:40):
New York to tell grim fairy tales, and he records
himself telling the story and also records the kids responding
in real time to the story. So this podcast works
on a number of levels for parents. There's something slightly
voyeuristic about the milieu of this podcast, which is, like
I mentioned this very fancy school because the kids parents,
you learn through their anecdotes, are all like really fancy careers,
(37:03):
like their set designers, their novelists, and you're just getting
this glimpse into kind of like the upper crust of
New York and how they're raising their kids. It's heavy.
I love it, Yeah, I love it. And then the
second thing is the kids are extremely precocious and well
spoken because their parents are again set design as a
novelist in the upper crust of New York, so they
add in these actually very witty interjections to the stories.
(37:26):
And then the third thing that's great about it is
that the grim fairy tales are just the best stories.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's like canceling Gretelin stuff. Yeah, right, Like it's all
the really disturbing ones that I loved.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Is really disturbing. And so that's why it's called grim, Grimmer, Grimmest,
because each fairy tale is ranked is it grim, is
it grimmer, or is it grimmest, And so you can
kind of pick how dark you want the story to be.
They're not sugarcoated, they're not done down. In fact, some
of the stories most of the stories are quite violent.
Love that, but in a kind of kid's storybook somehow
(37:57):
age appropriate way. How long are the episodes They range
in between about twenty and fifty minutes. You probably need
to buy some episodes if you want the whole back catalog,
but there's plenty of available for free on podcast platforms
to just try out. A good one to try out
versus Rumpelstiltskin, which is one of my favorites, and Gidwitz itself.
(38:18):
He's just a fantastic storyteller. There's a reason why when
you type his name into Google the first result is
Adam Gibwits married, because I've definitely googled that and you
will too. I love that.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Thank you so much. That is all we have time
for on Parenting out Loud today. Mom and mea studios
are styled with furniture from Fenton Inventon. Visit Fentoninfenton dot
com dot au. We will see you next Saturday. Bye.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
Parenting Out Loud. I'm Jesse Stevens and I am joined
by Amelia Lester, and we are here to talk about
some of the stories that dominated the week, because if
(00:36):
parents are thinking about it, we're talking about it. Amelia, Welcome,
Thanks Jesse. I wanted to thank you because a lot
of people may know you as a fashionistuf I believe
this tree is the correct term, and you recommended to
me your Lulu Lemon fled pants. We both agreed that
they were an elevated active way.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Look, an elevated pant, the term that fashion needs to be.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
And I bought them. I went and found them like secondhand, A.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You're wearing your elevated pants.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I feel solf.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
They're so good because no one knows their leggings except you.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, they're my new uniform.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Like I feel so jens Z like how I'm like
Billie Eilish, that's same. I feel she has them.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm so bad in them.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I just we just mixed metaphors there. But let's go with.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It infinitely cooler, So you are my cool guru.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Glad people say that to me a lot, actually, And.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
On the show today, one of the most pervasive pieces
of parenting advice is making everyone feel bad about themselves.
We've solved the mystery of what happened to the family
dinner table. Plus Courtney Kardashian thinks school is dated, why
more kids are being homeschooled than ever before? And Skinny
Talk Amelia is here to explain the social media phenomenon
(01:57):
promoting a skinny lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
But first, in case you missed it, Kate Hudson has
revealed Mindy Kayling was back to work an hour after
giving birth, which made me feel bad. Hudson, who will
be forever almost famous to me and I'm assuming to
you too, Jesse, but is in fact, somehow now forty
six years old and has three children. She is on
a press tour with Mindy Kayling and they have a
(02:20):
new show on Netflix called Running Point. I had to
look up what this was about. It's apparently about a
reformed party girl put in charge of her family's pro
basketball team.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Apparently it's a lot of fun. It's like a female
ted LASSI that's what I've med.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, well, it's not an immediately interesting plot to me,
I had to admit, but I do love everything Mindy
Kayling does, and she co created the show. Anyway, Hudson said,
we had a script she and Mindy at our first
table read she's on zoom. Then she has a baby
and is sending notes like an hour after she has
the baby. I was like, isn't Mindy literally in labor?
(02:53):
She is a powerhouse and delivers what she's going to deliver.
Hudson continued, I want to unpack this with you because
so Mindy Kayling is forty five, she has three children.
I don't have an issue with Mindy Kayling doing anything
an hour after giving birth. Godspeed to Mindy Kaling. She's
an amazing creative woman. But I think what I'm annoyed
(03:14):
about here is Kate Hudson lionizing the behavior. I think
that's what annoys me because doesn't it just put pressure
on other women who have maybe less power, fewer financial
resources to immediately get back to work after having a
baby when they hear stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah right, I agree with you. I'm in two minds
about it because, like you, I think a woman can do.
I was gonna say whatever she wants post birth probably
limits on that. I think that she can pick up
her phone if she wants, right, I've heard. I remember
Roxy just saying co speaking years ago, she's had two babies,
and she joked that she took one hour maternity leave,
(03:49):
and she said she checked her emails laying in the
hospital bed, and when she was sort of pressed on it,
she said, the baby was sleeping. I was going to
turn on the TV. I was going to have a sleeper.
I was going to open my emails. And I chose that.
And she's a woman running her own business like you
do you. I actually find it really infantalizing when people
tell women what they can and can't do. Yep. But
I agree that the pressure it then puts on other
(04:12):
mothers in particular, because let's not pretend like we wouldn't
have any issue really with a dad checking his emails
an hour a birth, that doesn't have the same.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
He's probably checking his emails during during.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Birth, yep, just checking his slack, making sure there's nothing
urgent coming through. But women, I think we do put
this pressure on each other. I remember seeing this imagery
of a woman pumping in the boardroom and that being
like it was some image that was going around and
it's like working mother.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I feel like when I was growing up, that was
just sort of an image you saw every day. It
was like in the nineties there was this say, you
have women in boardrooms pumping, yeah, with babies.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And I saw that and I felt furious because it
was like, but I don't want to be pumping in
a boardroom. I want to be at home with my baby.
And does that make me less ambitious or less hard working?
I think when it's used as a proxy for unshakable
work ethic, it's super, super dangerous because if there's ever
an excuse to not be on your emails, yeah, surely
(05:11):
it's when you've had a baby.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
You've dislodged a memory deep within me of a cover
of a magazine with Rachel McAdams pumping.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Oh I remember that.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Now. There's also been covers. For instance, Australian l I
think was a World Leader in a cover with a
woman breastfeeding. So I guess I shouldn't have an issue
with the Rachel McAdams pumping cover. It's certainly not anything prudish,
but again, it's the sense of why are you multitasking?
Because now I have to multitask. Isn't it enough to
just do one thing at a time.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
And the thing with pumping is that it's always it's
always spilling and you're always running, like that's the imagery
of the pumping that it's like, now you're not physically bound,
you too can do a marriage.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Sorry, do you not run when you pump? That's weird, Jessie.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
It's like, if you do want to sit down, it's lazy.
And I looked at this story, and I even looked
at Roxy a little bit more closely, and I thought,
I don't know if anyone here is actually telling us
that this is aspirational. But there is this sensitivity when
it comes to anything motherhood that we internalize it, that
(06:20):
we immediately go, You've just made me feel bad.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And specifically the competition element, like this is probably my
problem more than it is Kate Hudson's. Yeah, yeah, I
should understand that what Mindy Kayling does after birth has
nothing to do with me, and yet we're always implicitly comparing.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
One of the most pervasive pieces of parenting advice is
making people feel bad about themselves, and it's got to
do with the dinner table. Eating dinner as a family
is seen as a cornerstone of good parenting. According to
an article published in Slate last month, Research has linked
the practice too better nutrition, improved academic performance, decreased depression, anxiety,
(06:57):
and kids improve communication. I could go on, but the
author of this article, her name is Dawn t, says
that in reality, most families just can't make it work.
In Australia, less than half of families currently eat together. Amelia,
why do you think this is? On the surface, it
looks like a relatively simple thing to do.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I think, Jessie, that this is a real estate story.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
In what way?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Let me unpack this? Do people even have dining room
tables anymore? And aren't they doubling mostly as laundry rooms?
Or is that just me?
Speaker 2 (07:32):
I had my first dining table when I moved into
a home two months before we had Luna, and my
twin sister did not have a dining table for the
first year of her baby's life.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So did you grow up sitting around the dining room table? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, And I was reading about Actually, they surveyed a
bunch of millennials about whether you grew up in a
house or an apartment, and the overwhelming majority was a house,
not necessarily a big house, not necessarily in a city.
But there was a house, which meant you had a backyard,
it meant you didn't have super close neighbors who were
maybe sensitive to yelling and crying. And now the percentage
(08:10):
because of high density living in cities, I believe it's
gone through the roof.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah. An SPS story basically summed it up with the
headline raised in a house, but parenting in an apartment.
That is the experience. It's certainly my experience. And just
to throw some numbers at you because I thought they
were really interesting, the number of families with children and
apartments has increased by fifty six percent from twenty eleven,
which is huge. Yeah, and then one in five apartments
(08:36):
now are occupied by a family with children. Certainly, anecdotally,
almost everyone I know lives in an apartment and yet
grew up in a house.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
But apartments fundamentally are not built for families.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
They're not. Well, this is what I need to get
on my high horse about. I think even though Australians
are now living more and more in apartments and raising
children and apartments. I don't think that culturally we've caught
up with this, and I want to mention one particular
aspect that you touched on before. I think noise is
a real issue. So i live in an apartment with
two kids, and I've noticed that I'm not the most
(09:11):
popular resident of the apartment building. I think that's safe
to say. I don't think any of them listen to this,
and I don't think that I need to worry about
them being offended. I just don't think they like us
living in the apartment very much. Can talk about the
various microaggressions, but this is not time for my real
estate gripes. It's not just in my head, because it
turns out a twenty eighteen study found that Australians correlate
(09:33):
being a good neighbor with being a quiet neighbor, which,
fair enough, I get it, Yeah, quiet neighbors are probably
better on balance than loud neighbors. But also the survey
found that people think that children shouldn't be the norm
in apartments. They think that they shouldn't be noise from
children in apartments. And so how this changes my parenting
is that I'm constantly telling my children to speak less loudly.
(09:53):
The net result is that they actually play less. They
certainly horse play less because that's very loud. And often
if I'm really stressed out about the volume, I'll just
turn on the TV because then I know they won't
be screaming and running through the apartment playing tip And
I think that we're seeing the same thing with the
dinner table idea. We're constantly top that you'll only raise
good conversation as if you sit down at the dinner table.
(10:13):
And certainly I was raised sitting at the dinner table
watching the news every night. I cannot imagine subjecting my
children to the news in this day and age. But
the idea of that's what makes you a good parent
is grounded in an assumption that people are living in houses,
not flats.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Exactly right, And I suppose as well, the difference from
parenting and an apartment is a necessity every single day
to get out of the house. There is no like
they talk about how important it is to know, not supervise,
and to let kids sort of play and explore. When
you've got an apartment that's for square meters, there'n't a
lot of places to explore, and I was reading about
(10:51):
how in Singapore, for example, they open up public schools
after school hours and stuff so that parents, because let's
not pretend like Australia is the only place with high
density living right like France, China, Singapore is one of them,
and so they've found ways to make communal green space
where people can go and play. And Australia or the cities,
(11:13):
it really depends on your subit.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
This was something that really surprised me when I moved
back to Australia last year after many years in the US.
Public schools in the US routinely are open after school,
before school, and on the weekends they're just not closed
so you can take your kid in and play on
the playground equipment. Here, I was shocked by this notion
that when school ends, the gates close and you can't
(11:36):
use the playground, and it feels like a waste of
space because you've got all these areas for kids to play,
and it also again feels like it's a relic from
a time when kids went home from school and maybe
frolicked around the yard like chickens. We don't have a
yard now.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Most people din't it makes a really big difference. But
back to the dinner table example, I think even people
who live in homes or who do have dining tables,
and I think the apartment thing is that up and
it's too small for a dining table, or they've got
like built in benches, so the bench is kind of
the hub. But I think the way our homes have changed,
it's at the centerpiece of the house is now the
(12:11):
living room with the television. So true, and so screens
have stolen the time that we would ordinarily sit around
and have a chat. Maybe, and that's not like we
don't value that as much, or because we are living
in small or smaller places, the dining table has become
a place with just a lot of crap on it.
(12:32):
So it could be where you work during the day,
if you're working remotely. It could be homework. It could
be laundry because I don't have a laundry, like we
have to put it somewhere. The other thing I thought, Amelia,
and I wanted to know whether you feel the same
when I now picture a family sitting around at dinner table,
do you see that as class coded because I see
(12:52):
it as a sign of money. Yes, Like because you've
got both parents at home at six pm, which is
I would say, pretty rare. You've got someone who's made
the meal, but four six pm, or maybe you've got
help who's made the meal. But when I see that image, go, oh,
that's become really loaded with class for me.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
You're so right, because there's a fundamental physics problem in
getting a hot meal on a table at the time
that children want to eat it when we're all working
around the clock. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I don't know. It's like an impossible equation.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And so this idea of having the space for the
dining room table, having the parents who have divided the
labor of such that someone's made the meal or they,
as you say, assigned that to someone else, and then
having you all sit around the table, Yeah, it does
feel like a luxury in this day and age. But
I wonder do you think we should be worried about
(13:48):
this or do you think that the studies themselves are
kind of caught in the past.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Look, I think ideally it would be really good for us.
I think it would because in terms of nutrition and mindfulness,
when you're eating, it is better to not be looking
at a screen. I say, this is someone who often
eats in front of a screen. And the second thing
is I was reading about how evolutionarily we tend to
trust people we eat with. It's like a programmed thing.
(14:15):
That's like there's a sense of connection we feel equal to.
It is hardwired into us that something social happens when
we eat, Like, for example, if you're doing a business negotiation,
you have snacks on the table, it's more likely to
go well. So that's hardwired into us. And I think
that that connection even growing up. I think they're some
of my favorite memories. So I keep going, I'll do
(14:36):
it eventually, I'll do it eventually. It's aspirational, it's a
work in progress. Courtney kutashi In, the forty six year
old reality star and mum of four biological children and
two step kids, says going to school is dated and
let me explain.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
She was recently on her sister Chloe's podcast and said
she has a rebel streak that includes questioning the purpose
of sending her kids to school. Apparently her kids started
sending her videos of successful people. She didn't quantify that.
I don't know what her definition is. I'm gonna say
that's coded for rich saying that their kids will never
go to school, And when she really grappled with what
(15:14):
the goal was, she agreed that it was unnecessary and
decided to homeschool, and Chloe enthusiastically agreed. Now, there are
a myriad of reasons why you at homeschool your children.
But Amelia, do you think it's possible that Courtney just
got played by her kids who didn't want to go
to school next week?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I am intrigued by this notion of the videos of
successful people saying the kids will never go to school. Look,
I think this is part of a trend that has
come out of the US post COVID, and I'm actually
surprised that this trend has taken so long to make waves. Basically,
I think that as society becomes less equal, as the
(15:53):
very rich become not just very rich, but sort of
gluttonously extravagantly rich, there's no wonder they've decided school is
not for them. School is a fundamental leveling field. It's
a place where all children are meant to go to
learn the same things. And it's actually surprising that we've
managed a whole onto this kind of egalitarian institution for
as long as we have in such a stratified society.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
So in Courtney's defense, does it kind of not matter
if her kids go to school? Like for the rest
of us, it does matter because it is a great equalizer.
But if you are the child of Kourtney Kardashian, maybe
you don't need that. Maybe you don't need that background.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Well, now that we have this phrase generational wealth in
the language, I guess it doesn't really matter from a
financial perspective. But I think that once the rich start
pulling their kids from school, the institution starts to crumble.
I'm very worried about this. We've seen it also in
the US, with the way that Silicon Valley has rejected
the idea of higher education and of university. They've decided
(16:51):
that you don't need to go to university at all,
no matter what. It's a waste of time, it's indoctrinating
you and certain sort of center left ideological beliefs that
they don't approve of. Now they've come for school. It's
all part of the same movement.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
There's obviously been this widespread rejection of institutions, some of
it which is really understandable. For example, the Catholic Church
that have been criticized, and understandably people are moving away.
But there's also this rejection of education, of the scientific method,
of academia, of studies, of any sort of rigor to
(17:29):
the ideas that we put forward. And I wonder if
this is the beginning of the end in terms of
any sort of enlightenment ideals like it is worth reading
what other people say so that you can evolve how
you'd think.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, it's fundamentally anti intellectual. And I think that what
is of a piece with it is the Robert F.
Kennedy Make America Healthy Again movement, This idea that the
scientists might say that vaccines are worthwhile and that fluoride
makes your teams stronger, but what do they know. I'm
sure that Courtney Kardashian is sympathetic to that kind of
(18:02):
quasi scientific thinking as well. It's really a rejection not
just of education, but of expertise.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yes, and the reject of that expertise doesn't hurt the
Kurtney Kardashians. It hurts the people who don't get the
vaccination and have comobidities and are black or Hispanic and
have you know, a number of things that would make
them particularly vulnerable to an illness, right, and that's what
I think. Hearing her talk about that, I agree, made
(18:30):
me worried. And I agree as well that this has
a lot to do with the pandemic because in Australia,
if you look at homeschooling rates, absenteeism, which we should
say are not the same thing, but absenteeism school refusal,
they've gone through the roof and experts have said they
think that COVID made parents see schooling as something that
(18:54):
could be done from home. So in the same way
that working from home became something all employees went, well,
it's possible, you just sent us home. If they saw
that as something that worked for them or was even
a possibility, then suddenly you've got literally there are more
Australians being homeschooled than before. And they say that's a
result of things like bullying, of obviously the increase in
(19:15):
tech that it can be done, and also of safety
like them not feeling safe at school, which I think
is everyone's prerogative. And also homeschooling is a lot higher
among people with an autism diagnosis or an ADHD diagnosis.
Maybe there's also a discussion to be had about the
failings of some schools to cater to those diverse needs.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
And specifically the underfunding of public education around the country
as well. I've heard similar things from friends in the US.
I have a friend in a US state that is
very religious and she has to homeschool her child because
they do not have a lot of schools to choose
from around and her child has many additional needs that
(19:56):
the local schools were just not really able to meet,
so they made the decision to hire a private tutor
and homeschool their child. When she went to the local
town office to put in the application to homes school,
she was shocked by how easy it was to say
that you're going to homeschool your child and how little
supervision was applied to this process. So she basically filled
(20:19):
in a one page form that asked her very little
about what she was going to teach, didn't provide her
with any resources visa VIE, curriculum or anything else. She
essentially just had to say I want to homeschool my child.
I don't need to tell you the reasons, and then
got approved for it. And it was really viscerally upsetting
to her because while she's going to be making sure
(20:39):
that her child is meeting the state curriculum requirements and
has been in a position where she can hire a
tutor who she feels really confident in that can educate
her child properly. There are many people in this state
who clearly have parents who are not necessarily trying to
check all those boxes and are doing it because they
don't want them to be exposed to a mainstream school curriculum.
(21:01):
And that's really concerning to me. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And that speaks to the Courtney Kardashian example too, because
I don't think any of us would imagine that Courtney
is going to sit at home and teach maths like
that's access to a private tutor, which is again like
something that's on offer to some families and not to others.
Another thing that I've heard everyone in my family, teachers
and both my parents spoke about an enormous rise in
(21:29):
this school refusal phenomenon after COVID. It's been almost rebranded
by some people in the space as school can't because
they say refusal suggests they're making a decision, and these
are kids who cannot go to school, and so all
these psychologists are trying to work out what to do,
because in Australia you have to go to school, like
there are repercussions and the school has to get involved,
(21:51):
and it can be really complicated. I would look at
these stories and kind of go, all right, there were
days I didn't want to go to school either, like
I didn't have a lot of empathy for it. And
Dad told me this story about a kid, the poor
mother just putting the kid in the car, and Dad's
standing there and the mother just trying to pull him
by his ankles and being like, you have to go
to school, this is so important, and the kid just couldn't, like,
(22:14):
couldn't go into the classroom.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
This is a post COVID study.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
This is a post COVID story. And the numbers nearly
half of all students missed ten percent of school in
twenty twenty two, so that's actually quite a lot. The
sick days thing is becoming more and more prominent, which
I guess is probably to do with screens. But again
the idea that it's optional. When something becomes optional as well,
(22:40):
then I suppose you go I'm not going to go today.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I was surprised when I started my kids at their
school that they still give out prizes for best attendancy.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, that's controversial, contras, I can see why, because kids
can't help it when they get sick.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Do we learn nothing from COVID? I'm just really surprised.
Why do you think schools I mean, I guess I'm
going to answer something own question here. I think schools
are persisting with that idea of perfect intendance and rewarding
kids who make it into school the most because they're
seeing this trend of school refusal or school can't and
they want to hammer home what an example of a
(23:19):
kid showing up every day.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Looks like and the importance of sitting in the classroom,
because my parents would say that, you know, you might
look at your nine, or you might look at your
five and go, come on, what's a day? But if
you repeatedly miss that, there are certain blocks in learning
that are very difficult to catch up on. So there
is something that you will learn in year five. I'm
not saying on one day. I'm just saying, like, if
you you know, and people who have had a prolonged
(23:42):
illness will know this, you miss that and it become
very hard to catch up in year six or year seven.
So I suppose it is like, if you're on the fence,
go but presentee, is there more forcing that also isn't
the ideal?
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yes, So I guess we're kind of talking about a
few different things here. One is the rise of homeschooling,
which I think we can attribute to the general decline
of trust in authority and expertise post COVID, and it's
right now. It's being led by very wealthy people, I
would say, who want to control what their children learn
and are maybe not very interested.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And then on the other hand, people with kids with
different needs. I think that's the other group. Yeah, we've
probably got to acknowledge and in fact, for them, the
outcomes are really good.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Liv Schmidt is a twenty three year old model in
New York City who makes her money encouraging women and
girls to follow the skinny lifestyle. This was a story
in The Cut last week that is causing people to
lose their minds. Basically I knew nothing about this, but
Live Schmidt. She was on TikTok until last year, then
she was banned after a Wall Street Journal article. Now
(24:50):
she's on Instagram. She's just been banned from Instagram as
a result of this article. Basically she mocks women who
she says are large and fat. She posts videos where
she says things like girls be three hundred pounds, saying
I'm a snack. No Megatron, you're the fkn vending machine.
So just really nice things like that. She has a
(25:12):
subscription only group called Skinny Society, which, for twenty dollars
a month, members gain access to exclusive content, including recipes,
workout videos, and diaries of everything Schmid eats in one day.
She gained some notoriety recently because she said that instead
of having dessert, you could swallow your boyfriend's semen, and
(25:35):
she said that semen's only something like five calories of
tea spoon, so that's good to know. There's also a
group dm thread that you get access to where people
basically egg themselves on to eat less. And it's just
really distressing to read about airmail. The publication Airmail recently
estimated that she makes one hundred and thirty thousand US
(25:55):
dollars a month from the six and a half thousand
members in the Skinny Society. So look, I think why
this article made such a splash is that people definitely
did not realize how thriving this somewhat underground community is
because as shown by the fact that TikTok and Meta
both had to ban her after news articles came out,
(26:15):
so clearly they're not moderating their platforms very well. If
you search skinny or skinny talk on TikTok and Instagram,
you'll apparently see thousands of videos along these lines of
very thin women showing off their locale diets. What's interesting
about liv Schmidt to me, having lived through the nineties
and Kate Moss and heroin Chic, is that she's very
(26:36):
careful not to advocate for particular foods, particular diets. She
frames it all in this sort of faux feminist empowering language.
She says things like eat like you're the main character,
because you are. She says, eat like your highest self
is watching. So it's a very interesting kind of twist
on that feminist rhetoric to basically further eating disorders. And
(27:00):
the Cut article found evidence of girls in high school
posting on skinny society, including about how thin they were
for their graduations. Shocked by this, but maybe that's because
I'm not super immersed in social media, Jesse. How did
this article make you feel. Were you shocked by it?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
I was because I'm not being served this. But then
the way the algorithms work, the people who will be
most sensitive to it will And maybe it's easy for
us to assume that the culture has shifted. But I
was at something a few weeks ago where it was
like a kid's fun day thing, right, and there was
like an obstacle course, and there was a jumping castle
(27:39):
and there was face painting, and in the obstacle course
there was a tunnel thing, you know, kids like run
through these little tunnels. And there was a girl, she
might have been six or seven, and she was standing
there and her friend said, why aren't you going through
the tunnel like because she hadn't been doing it, and
she said, I can't fit through the tunnel. I'm too fat.
(28:01):
And the look on this girl's face, I went, Oh,
I thought that didn't happen anything. Yes, I thought that
that's not how we spoke exactly. It wasn't that she
said I can't fit, because she could have gone I'm
too big. She was a little bit older than the
four year old's going through. It was the way the
word fat came out of her mouth that I went, oh,
that's got to her at seven? Yeah, like that is sickening.
(28:23):
There is so much information now on food and solids
and feeding and all of that and how to prevent
you know, restriction and all of that. And I've been
deep in this because I have a child who eating
has never been very straightforward, and the idea that you
put it there and as you decide when you're full,
and you don't comment on things like that. But I've
(28:45):
certainly noticed that even like oh, she's so little or whatever,
has already started. And I wonder how you then protect
them from because inevitably, and I went through this, you
then go through puberty where your body starts to change
and suddenly you know, maybe you're not that little, or
(29:05):
parts of you, whatever it is, it's a really hard
thing to sort of recalibrate. I wouldn't think that seven
year old is even on social media, so I imagine
that it's just coming into the well.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
It's like ground, as you point out with your own child,
people are already judging or commenting on her body, on
Luna's body, so it's happening early. And I completely agree
with what you said about thinking that we were over
this because you and I both lived through the body
positivity moment in the mid two thousands, and thinking back
(29:39):
to I guess it all started actually with the dove
ads and then it kind of snowballed from there, and
it coincided actually with the decline of magazines, which is
where I certainly inhaled a lot of this content in
the nineties, and I sort of thought we were just
beyond it, that along with them on nuanced understanding of
things like sexuality and race relations and the environment and
(30:00):
taking care of the environment, we were just getting more progressive,
more enlightened, and that our children wouldn't have to deal
with this. While it turns out I was wrong, And
what came through to me in this cut article is
that every generation ends up having this issue, and it's
just that the language around it changes and the media
in which it's consumed changes. So I mentioned that for
(30:21):
me in the nineties, it was very much magazines that
were conveying the diet tips. In the early two thousands,
it was probably live journal, Tumbler of those kinds of platforms.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Oh Tumblr, I forgot how and that was very much
the image that it had. This Really there was a
term that was used that was almost hashtagged, and it
attracted people who were struggling with eating disorders and glorified.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Bro Anna right, yes, yes, yeah, so that was the
thing then and now it's just moved on to a
different platform. What I want to ask you is, do
you think that there is any escaping it or is
this kind of like nihilistic idea that every generation of
young women inevitably has to cope with this.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I think it's true that we had this optimism. I
remember hearing mums talk about it in the office of like,
I'm going to get my daughter when she has a phone.
I'll just follow a bunch of diverse people on Instagram,
so she'll see all of those images and it'll be
the antithesis of a magazine or whatever, because she'll have
all of these different bodies and shapes coming up. You
can't do that on TikTok, like you just can't and.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Won't curate in that way. No control.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
All it takes is you know, I'm pretty sure if
that app knows that you're a young girl, it's going
to go. I know what to give you, and then
all you have to do is stay for a second,
and you're just going to get more and more so
in that way, I don't think so. But from what
I've heard, people I know that grew up with a
real complex around weight seemed to absorb some of that
(31:50):
from their family. And I just maybe the hope or
the thing that I go the difference we can make
is like how we talk about it inside the house, yes,
and the language, how you speak about other people, how
you speak about food, how you speak about bodies, how
you look at yourself in the mirror, All of those
things I think does impact it. I grew up with
a mum who never commented on her body once, not negatively,
(32:12):
not her face, not anything, and I think it was
just like to me in my house, it felt irrelevant,
whereas I know that that really impacted other people who
grew up with a different experience.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
It's also really hard to escape even when you are
trying to create a body neutral space within your family.
So for instance, I loved Roll Dyal books growing up.
Oh yeah, been reading them to my children, Matilda, Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory and the Twits. And the problem
with these books is that the word fat and the
(32:44):
idea that people who are ugly on the inside are
always ugly on the outside, and that those two things
are essentially synonymous. It pervades those books. A sort of
repulsion for women's bodies, particularly fat women's bodies, particularly women
who are maybe not your platonic ideal of beauty and
(33:05):
the merging of the inner and outer self. It's there
through those books. It's shot through them, and a lot
of older books do have that idea of inner beauty
being the same as out of beauty, and if fairy
tales have it too. In fact, the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella,
for instance, they're both ugly and mean. Cinderella is both
(33:26):
beautiful and kind, and to decouple those qualities if you're
going to read classic kids literature, it's really difficult to
convey that those two things are not synonymous.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
That must be why every children's book now is animal.
It's like it's a gendlest animal because it's like we
could project on it. It doesn't matter the size. Sometimes
it's an elephant, sometimes it's a mouse. But it's like
you don't get all of that complexity of trying to
then identify them into a certain body, or you know that's.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
True because it is also quite recent that we've started
to talk about this in this way. For instance, Harry
Potter is full of the same thing, and that was
written in the two thousands. So it just goes to
show that we're hopefully on the cutting edge of trying
to teach a different thing to our children. But then again,
I'm sure our feminist mothers thought that they were doing
(34:18):
that too. Alright, it's time for recommendations, Jesse, what have
you got for us?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Amelia? Have you ever been to a toy library?
Speaker 1 (34:24):
No? I see these signs. Tell me what they're like.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
They sound wondering, they're so good, and it's so not
something I would ever have gone and found.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Well, it would be weird if you didn't have kids
and were just hanging out at toy library exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
But the toy library is part of my local library,
which is on my strings, so very very easy. But
I looked it up and there are hundreds across the country.
It's not just my neighborhood. But a toy library is
literally you go in and it's got every toy you
could possibly imagine. It has costumes, you know, there's a
stage at which they might like a little pram to
(34:58):
practice their walking and you know, you need that for
like two months and then you never need it again.
It has things like that, and then you do aigh.
I think it was like seventy bucks for a twelve
month subscription, and I could go every week if I
want it, and I can get like three or four.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Toys, and then I get three at a time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, so you get multiple toys return them. And I
was like, can I donate toys to this because I
remember reading something a while ago about how there's an
ideal amount of toys for They say it's between ten
and fifteen.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
So it probably wouldn't and probably wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
And it inspires creativity because it's like, if they don't
have the doll, then they have to make the doll
out of playtoes, which is yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
That's where my parents went wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
But Toy Library is so so good because we all
know the clutter everything. Often your kid just wants it
for two weeks and then it disappears and they never
think about it again. So I love that. That's my
my hack. How about you, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
My recommendation is one very near and dear to my heart.
It's been a companion in my life. For years now.
It's a podcast. It's called Grim Grimmer Grimmist. Have you
heard of it?
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Is it Grim Brothers related?
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Oh I love them.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yes, it is Grim fairy tales. I mean the Grim
Brothers are like true crime for the eighteenth century?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Right, Were they twins or just brothers? I think they
want maybe just brothers. But Clara and I find them
very inspiring because they watch Yeah, it's really sweet.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
So the host is Adam Gidwitz. It's an American podcast,
and the fifth season of this podcast drops, And yes
I did say dropped. I'm very excited about it. Dropped
a couple of days ago. That's my household version of
rep TV. Just to give you a sense of how
exciting this is. So here's the premise. Adam Gibwitz goes
to the classroom of a very fancy school in Brooklyn,
(36:40):
New York to tell grim fairy tales, and he records
himself telling the story and also records the kids responding
in real time to the story. So this podcast works
on a number of levels for parents. There's something slightly
voyeuristic about the milieu of this podcast, which is, like
I mentioned this very fancy school because the kids parents,
you learn through their anecdotes, are all like really fancy careers,
(37:03):
like their set designers, their novelists, and you're just getting
this glimpse into kind of like the upper crust of
New York and how they're raising their kids. It's heavy.
I love it, Yeah, I love it. And then the
second thing is the kids are extremely precocious and well
spoken because their parents are again set design as a
novelist in the upper crust of New York, so they
add in these actually very witty interjections to the stories.
(37:26):
And then the third thing that's great about it is
that the grim fairy tales are just the best stories.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's like canceling Gretelin stuff. Yeah, right, Like it's all
the really disturbing ones that I loved.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Is really disturbing. And so that's why it's called grim, Grimmer, Grimmest,
because each fairy tale is ranked is it grim, is
it grimmer, or is it grimmest, And so you can
kind of pick how dark you want the story to be.
They're not sugarcoated, they're not done down. In fact, some
of the stories most of the stories are quite violent.
Love that, but in a kind of kid's storybook somehow
(37:57):
age appropriate way. How long are the episodes They range
in between about twenty and fifty minutes. You probably need
to buy some episodes if you want the whole back catalog,
but there's plenty of available for free on podcast platforms
to just try out. A good one to try out
versus Rumpelstiltskin, which is one of my favorites, and Gidwitz itself.
(38:18):
He's just a fantastic storyteller. There's a reason why when
you type his name into Google the first result is
Adam Gibwits married, because I've definitely googled that and you
will too. I love that.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Thank you so much. That is all we have time
for on Parenting out Loud today. Mom and mea studios
are styled with furniture from Fenton Inventon. Visit Fentoninfenton dot
com dot au. We will see you next Saturday. Bye.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com